Pros+ Great puzzles+ Good level design+ Most bosses are great+ All levels have challenges which enhance the replay value+ A good amount of collectibles+ Enjoyable singleplayer+ Amazing local co-op

Cons- Paper-thin story- Cheesy, dumb villain who is also a coward - he runs away from you from start to finish- Buggy online co-op- Voice acting is weak-Cutscenes are lackluster - The characters lips do not move; the camera angles "cleverly" change to make that unnoticeable.

"Long" version:

I'm a big Tomb Raider fan and when Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light was announced, I thought it was a horrible idea. Fortunately, this game is quite an enjoyable experience.

Lara finds herself in Central America looking for an artifact called the Mirror of Smoke. After a long journey, she is successful, but a group of mercenaries led by a local warlord ambushes Lara and misuses the mirror, unleashing Xolotl, the aztec god of death and darkness. Totec, the Guardian of Light, is then awaken - he informs Lara that Xolotl must be stopped until dawn, otherwise, the world will face certain doom.

The story is really predictable and shallow. You release an evil god and you spend the whole game chasing him. The thing is, you are always on his heels, so he feels like a total coward, constantly running away. Its design is also bad in comparison with all the other bosses; he looks too cartoony and the stakes are never high. You don't care about any of the characters and the only reason you "care" about Lara is because of how well-established she already is as a videogame character/icon. If she was a new character, we would know nothing about her. You can play as Lara (Singleplayer/Multiplayer) or Totec (Multiplayer only) and the levels design changes accordingly.

The game can be played with a single player and a second player can connect at any time - Locally or Online.Single player is good but I would suggest playing Local Co-op for a full, rich experience.Local Co-op is amazing - solving puzzles with a buddy is awesome. You can also kill your teammate so there are a ton of possibilities for revenge and a few laughs, usually followed by an impalled/crushed ally.On the other hand, Online Co-op is full of bugs and there are a lot of synch problems. Bullets doing nothing to enemies and Totec's spears not spawning (they are necessary to cross certain obstacles) are only some of the bugs I encountered with friends.

The gameplay is this game's main strength; it focuses on platforming, combat and puzzle solving.

Platforming is relatively simple. Lara and Totec can use their gadgets to get to higher places or to cross pits and chasms. Totec has a shield that allows Lara to jump on him and perform a bigger jump, allowing her to reach higher platforms; Lara can then pull him up using her grapple. Totec also has spears; once thrown against a wall, Lara can use these to cross certain obstacles.

Combat is good. You have a lot of weapons to choose from but you'll find yourself using the same combination over and over again. Once you kill enough enemies, you'll enter some sort of berserk mode and you'll get an upgrade - mana/health regenaration, scatter shots or even better mines - that will last until you are hit by your enemies. This kind of makes the game's combat super easy. If you pick a powerful weapon and you keep regenarating mana, you'll be able to kill everything with ease. Your enemies are a bunch of clumsy demons and summons who are kind of shallow in design, but they offer a decent enough challenge later on, when their numbers are massive. Some of these creatures get a different color pallet on certain levels, which provides them with different abilites (ressurection, explosion when killed, etc.). My real gripe with the enemies is that you only come across a really limited number of different creatures. More variety would have been better.

The puzzles are quite easy to figure out and only slightly harder to solve. You'll have to time jumps and dodges, activate pressure pads and deactivate hazards/barriers that block your way. Their design is really good and the scale grows bigger and more impressive in later levels. Unfortunately, even harder puzzles are sort of basic and provide no real challenge..

To mix things up and add replay value, each level provides some optional challenges to complete. They can be really easy to complete - destroy all trucks in a level or jump 12 times over a trap - or "infuriating" (complete the whole level in under X minutes or navigate a trap-filled hall on your first attempt). Once completed, these challenges provide helpful new weapons, health/mana upgrades or even relics. Relics are equippable items - they change your stats and help you in combat (better bombs, better speed, etc.).

Sound is kinda generic - guns don't really sound all that great but it's serviceable (explosions sound good, though). The dialogue is really cheesy and considering the story is also bad, you won't care about what the characters are saying - not that it matters. The game features a good soundtrack - I might be wrong but I think some of it was used in Tomb Raider Anniversary and maybe even in TR Legend and Underworld.

The game looks fairly decent. You'll have some graphical glitches from time to time but the game knows what it is and it tends to amaze you with huge environments instead of with graphical detail. Character models are ok, but their lips do not move during cutscenes; the camera angle keeps changing so players won't notice.

Overrall, this game is a great purchase if you enjoy inventive puzzle solving, mixed with a fair amount of combat and platforming. It might have big flaws, including what was supposed to be its main selling point (online co-op) but the gameplay is so satisfying and local co-op is so good that this is an experience I gladly recommend. The game currently costs 10€ - I'd suggest getting it on a sale. I think it is worth 5€ if you are desperate for a puzzle game but it goes on sale fairly often so I'd wait for a 75/80% discount.

Works fine as a nice single player adventure too, but it's best to play in coop mode. Great looking, varied and complex levels with awesome puzzles, tricky traps and some nice action moments. I love how clever some puzzles are, and that there are more than one solutions for some of them, you really need to use all your gears and your brains to solve all the obstacles. The replay value is also good, as you have many weapons, upgrades and challenges to complete. All in all, it's a fun adventure!

Even though this is a spin-off and not a main Tomb Raider entry, this game is pretty Tomb Raider-tastic.

Lara hunts down an artifact no one should wield and sets off apocalyptic events that only she can stop? YEP.Plenty of shooting of natural and supernatural enemies in well-paced fight encounters? YEP.Lots and lots of booby traps to avoid, disarm, or survive? YEP.Puzzles that usually involve timing, platforming and typical Lara acrobatics? YEP.Smartass one-liners and quips from Lara almost everytime she opens her mouth? Yep.Well-placed and often hidden collectibles? Yep.MANY, MANY GUNS? YEP.Tomb raiding? You bet!

The controls are snappy and responsive, the puzzles and platforming are very satisfying, and ultimately pretty much everything about the gameplay is rewarding in some way. Every level has a handful of optional objectives you can try to complete for even more rewards -- such as artifacts or relics that boost your stats or combat ability in various ways. The game's visuals and audio both are actually a hell of a lot better than I expected, and I often found myself gleefully looking around to admire the level design or dancing around a boss in time with the boss stage's music.

Bonus: You can play this with a friend, and the game even redesigns much of the levels' puzzles to accomodate 2 players. The second player character, Totec, CANNOT be played on his own, i.e. if you're playing on your own, Lara is your only option. But, well, she's the far cooler option anyway. :P

A tip: Use a controller. The game only fully recognizes Xbox 360 type controllers but you can very easily fool it into accepting others by using a controller emulator (x360ce). Mouse and keyboard controls have much more precise aiming for shooting, but I found they just were too clunky for me for -everything- else.

This is an amazing game! A Tomb Raider game from an isometric perspective letting you complete it in coop mode, too! You cannot go wrong with such an approach! You have action, you have puzzles, you have collectibles and you have a very good level design. Some of the collectibles are difficult to obtain so there is replayibility here. Also, some puzzles / challenges are completely different in coop, thus, the game should at least be completed twice (alone and with a friend) for the different experience.

For me Guardian of Light was a nice surprise after the many third-person shooter episodes. Interestingly, the idea and the development came from the same team so this really is a thumbs-up!

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is an action/adventure game. It combines the hallmarks of the Tomb Raider franchise including exploration & discovery, platforming, and puzzle solving combined with character progression, fun fast-paced combat, and elements of human cooperation and competition.

I've only played the online CO-OP Multiplayer not the Singleplayer. But I guess the Singleplayer is similar to the CO-OP Multiplayer. I recommend this game definitely for the CO-OP mode.

Bought Specifically for the 2-player Co-op gameplay available in order to play with a friend, and we had a freaking blast!The puzzles are really well thought out and can be tricky. The combat starts out simple but towards the end of the game it becomes insane, especially when combat difficulty is set to high.

There were a few times when my buddy and I experienced some of your typicaly glitches such as no-clipping and shooting across the map when dying. However, the amount of fun we had throughout this game makes up for any minor problems. Besides, it is fun to fall through the ground now and then and have a laugh.

The length of the game is short (completed Co-op in ~10 hours on medium) but not easy. Ramping up the difficulty will surely make this short game an easy 15 - 20 hour experience.

Overall, I would recommend this game to anyone looking for a fun 'small' game with an insane CO-OP mode.

Transplanting the Tomb Raider franchise onto an isometric shooter, its genius lies not within its clever puzzles or satisfying combat, but the lengths at which it has been designed from the ground up as a brilliant coop experience. It forces you to think with two players in mind instead of opting for the far simpler solution of just dropping another player in beside you, and this devotion makes for refreshingly unique puzzle designs and the means with which you navigate the world.

The focus on teamwork is in large part based on the different character abilities between archaeologist, Lara Croft, and the ancient Mayan warrior, Totec. Each has various gear and moves (from a grappling hook, to a shield that can be raised and jumped on) and it's in using them in tandem that you can manage to make your way through environments that one person couldn't. It inspires cooperation in ways that simply providing double the fire power doesn't, putting you in situations where each player has a specific role and no one feels the lesser for theirs.

It's a fairly radical departure for the series traditional gameplay hooks, but Guardian of Light still feels distinctly Tomb Raider. Though the perspective has changed and there's less of an emphasis on platforming, there are still plenty of supernatural monsters to kill and tombs to raid, with puzzles that are probably the best the series has ever seen. They revisit many of the same designs but in a way that's constantly layering on new challenges, requiring you continue expanding your perception of them even when on the surface they're born of the same basic template.

I don't doubt that it's entirely possible to play Guardian of Light as a solo adventure and have a good amount of fun with it, but to me that would be missing a huge portion of what makes it so enjoyable. There's just nothing quite like the sort of beautiful coop design presented with a game like this, with playing with friends already being generally more entertaining and something so tailor made to that playstyle elevating it to new heights. There's something really special to me about games that can serve as essentially bonding moments between friends and family, and ones as smart and polished as this are all too rare.

It’s a shame they didn’t take notes from Guardian of Light when developing the most recent reboot of Tomb Raider. While Lara croft in the most recent core entry in the Tomb Raider series is trying her best to shed all the enjoyable puzzles and adventuring that made the series famous to instead become the new quick time event action movie star and dethrone Drake from Uncharted, Lara Croft in the Guardians of Light offers everything that made Tomb Raider great.

The game is centered on fast paced action combat, exploration, and completing various interesting and sometimes challenging puzzles. Unlike the core entries in the franchise, Guardians of Light takes the approach of having players control the game from an isometric view point, this type of view point allows for a very enjoyable seamless co-op mode experience.

As far as visuals go there’s nothing in this game that will overwhelm you, but for an isometric view game from 2010 it holds up very well. The level design on the other hand is absolutely brilliant, offering a wide variety of puzzles ranging from one room dungeons to entire expansive multi-tomb map sized puzzles. The puzzles are normally completed through various interactions between Lara and her co-op companion Totec, the Guardian of Light. Each character plays slightly different from one another, each with their own pros and cons, Totec is bulkier and has a shield so he fits more into the role of a tank, he also uses throwing spears as his primary weapon that can also be used to make platforms for the much lighter and more nimble and agile Lara Croft. Totec can also raise his shield above his head to use as a platform and then Lara can use her grappling hook to pull up Totec or make rope bridges for him to climb up. There are many instances in the game where you are put into a situation where you have to act very quickly and rely heavily on your partner to either lift you into the right position or to carry you to safety before you are either crushed, mauled, or mutilated, and in these intense, fast paced, high pressure situations is where the game shines.

The combat handles just the way you’d expect it to for an isometric view arcade shooter. There aren’t really any complaints as long as you aren’t the guy who gets stuck as player 2 using a gamepad controller, because you’ll be SoL and instead of a crosshair you will get stuck with the tiniest little light that shines on the wall in the direction you are facing as your point of reference for the general area in which you’ll be firing. This honestly wouldn’t be that bad, when you see the light it works really well, but the problem is that it’s constantly being hidden behind objects in the foreground and you have to blindly fire at enemies while you franticly search for your little light. The game does offer a fairly extensive variety of weapons to choose from, from pistols to assault rifles to flame throwers, they’re all present and accounted for. Each character has their own primary weapon; Lara’s being her pistols and Teco’s being his throwing spears, both of which have unlimited ammunition, all of the other weapons are useable by both characters and their ammunition is monitored by a depleting ammo bar below your health bar that is replenished by the abundant ammo drops located on the map and from enemy drops.

The game tries to shake things up and keep the gameplay from feeling stale by adding various challenges for each level such as reach the end of the level by “X” amount of time, or blow up a certain number of random objects placed throughout the map. Completion of these challenges result in acquiring a unique perk or item that can be applied to your character to greatly aid you in your adventures. An example of the most beneficial perk I came across during my adventures was a perk that became activated if I managed to chain together a large enough kill streak without being injured by any enemies, my gun would then switch over to rapid triple shot mode and allow me to plow through hordes of enemies like a true bonafide bad♥♥♥♥♥ The best part is that all the perks and items you acquire are useable on both characters, so you don’t have to worry about your partner hording the juicy loot.

Overall Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light provides an excellent experience that becomes even that much more enjoyable when played with a friend in co-op. The fast paced action combat is thrilling and there is an abundance of quality puzzles that keeps you engaged and entertained. With the only complaint being minor control issues for player 2, the Guardian of Light is truly a game worth buying and enjoying alongside a friend.